Peter Everett: Stress of Celebrity Apprentice gave me shingles

PETER Everett says his time on Celebrity Apprentice was so stressful he suffered shingles and a severely ulcerated throat and had trouble sleeping for more than a month after he was booted from the show.

Everett, who was fired by Mr Bouris after a laundry challenge in which the contestants had to wash and dry clean hundreds of items of dirty clothing said doctors attributed his illness solely to the stress he experienced while on the program.

"I always say people tend to die to get away from a situation they don’t feel comfortable enough to get out of and I was doing that," Everett told news.com.au, "in a very short time my body was shutting down. Shingles for a month and an ulcerated throat, that's not a happy body."

The former Ready, Steady, Cook host said he got very little sleep on the show, working long days that required him to wake up at 4am and not get home until 11.30pm at night.

"I was staying with some friends in Sydney and honestly, I was coming home saying 'please don't make me go back there, please don’t make me go back'.

"I was severely depleted, I was getting sick and trying to pull energy out of nowhere and added with the emotional side, it was hard core. I'm not used to it.

"I was sitting in front of Mr Bouris for most of the boardrooms thinking please, please, please sack me."

Everett attributes the stress to the bullying culture he experienced on the show and says he worries what young children like his Goddaughter think when they watch the "vicious" behaviour of some contestants.

Peter EverettSource:news.com.au

"My little Goddaughter phoned me last week and said 'Uncle Pete, I saw you on the show and I didn’t think when you were an adult that it was the same and people bully you' and I said 'is that how you saw it?' And she said 'yes, they were really nasty', and she told me how she was being bullied at school. She's only 11 or 12."

"We (celebrities) have a responsibility to those kids and I don’t know whether we're put in the best light on a show like that, I don’t think its setting the best example for the rest of the nation or children watching to think that this is how we operate and behave. It doesn’t foster the right culture when people are constantly attacking each other."

Everett said he felt patronised, ganged up on and like an outsider during the challenges, but most of the celebrities were pleasant to him off-camera.

In one episode, his name was the only one left off a flier to promote the team of celebrities.

"That stung when I was left off the flier. I was upset," he said.

"I didn’t know if it showed how forgettable I am or if my teammates were just egotistical, but either way it was quite hard to deal with.”

In another, Prue MacSween scolded Everett for not standing up for himself and for every young kid who has been bullied in the playground.

"I'll admit it, I was quite numb at that point, just trying to exist and I didn’t want to give it another thought and part of me later was not very happy with myself that I didn’t speak up but I was in survival mode and it got to the point that I thought ‘anything I say here is going to be misconstrued, they’re going to be judging it and that's too special a topic to be judged’, I didn’t want anyone judging what I had to say about that and I certainly don’t condone bullying."

"It wasn’t worth it to me for me to become something I despised."

Despite Everett’s struggle on the show, last night’s episode raised a record amount of money for charity - $327,000.

The former TV presenter was delighted when winning project manager Dermott Brereton donated 10 per cent of the total winnings to his charity.

Dawn Fraser also stripped down to her underwear to earn the team $100,000 - the highest single donation ever received on Celebrity Apprentice Australia.

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